Wednesday, October 8, 2008

The Most Boring Debate EVER!


I've been working the night shift at a studio that converts 2d films to 3d. 4:30pm to 3:30am. What a grind! The resulting insomnia is hard to overcome. I thought I would bring a radio in and listen to last night's debate as I worked rotoscoping elements of stupid film clips into the wee hours. I'm glad I didn't. Those two buffoons are about as relevant and interesting as the contestants in a beauty contest when they answer the question, "What would you do to change the world?" I never would have been able to stay awake and so would have added to America's jobless statistics.

Now all the people that I know who are anti-Obama (I know few real McCain supporters) are really depressed because the polls are showing Obama slightly ahead. This is a case of the headline being different than the text of the story. If you just read the headline you miss the statement, "Leaners are included in the total of the candidate they are leaning towards." That means people who answer, "Well, I guess I might vote for Obama, maybe" are included in the final percentages. The 'internals' of the polls are skewed in favor of the Democrats, generally speaking. The media supports the Democrats so is it any surprise that the polls conducted by that same media are coming up with the desired result? Its like those phony polls that we get in fundraising letters ("Do you support Ted Kennedy's radical socialistic power-grab or would you rather the government not tax 90% of your income?). No group of any persuasion takes a poll and doesn't get the desired result. What's the persuasion of the media again? Unbiased. Scientific. Right.

Excuse me if I just don't see it the way that the pollsters do. I think back to Bill Clinton, a true political heavyweight, a guy who was never caught flat-footed ever by anybody. This great performer, this political star who had a gang of spinners and attackers who came across like in between TV guest shots on cable news shows they sat around in the back room snorting lines of chicken crank and taking the edge off the methedrine rush by passing around a bottle of Wild Turkey. Gremlins like Carville would pop up and filibuster, lie and insinuate at a mile a minute like some babbling speed-freak. The fax machines of the press were jammed by faxes from the Clinton Campaign. They attacked, attacked, attacked while their smarmy candidate felt our pain and our daughters with his great big long fingers. And what did the most politically talented Democrat to emerge since Harry Truman add up to? Numbers in the forty percent range.

Clinton 'debated' Dole in '96...that one I saw, and a truly pathetic spectacle it was! Does anyone look at Obama and say to themselves, "Wow! That dude is as good as Big Bill, our first black president!"? No they don't. Obama gave a good speech or two last February but he's definitely been off his feed since he got the nomination. He can't answer questions off the cuff at all. Every performance he gives shows what a lightweight he is. Obama doesn't know anything; or he realizes that what he does know is so unacceptable that he feigns ignorance. The whole 'Hope and Change' thing has dissolved in a cloud of ambiguity. Obama's only gambit now is to attack George W Bush. He has no agenda, no identifiable program, no philosophy, no direction new or old.

So what's my point? My point is that the "Well, I guess I might vote for Obama, maybe" people are not going to vote for Obama. They never were. These voters are upset with Bush after eight years of total media saturation and are freaked out by the financial crisis so when the phone call from Zogby comes they speculate on whether they might take a flyer and vote for the New Guy. When the day arrives these are 90% McCain voters. This is the Bradley Effect. Blue collar people need an affirmative reason to vote for someone as radical as Obama and his themeless mish-mash of ridiculous attacks against McCain are not a reason to vote for Obama. He's not even 'The New Guy' anymore, Palin is. She's drawing crowds of fifty or sixty thousand in the battleground states; more than Obama. She's the draw in NASCAR land, where the swing voters live.

So November 4th the "Well, I guess I might vote for Obama, maybe" folks are going to walk into the voting booth and actually be forced to make a decision. They won't have any reason to vote for an Al Sharpton-like ACORN 'community organizer'. The numbers that Hillary Clinton got against Obama towards the end of her run, when it was certain that Obama was going to be the nominee, are going to be replicated by McCain in some places that are going to surprise everyone. This is an opportunity for all of us. Because of these polls the Obamanoids are giving 2-1 odds. Time to start placing a few bets. But make sure that you get someone else to hold the money; you're dealing with Democrats here and history has few examples of a more sanctimoniously dishonorable group of people than modern liberals.

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